I met with over 60 districts during five days (it was quite a marathon, at 20 minutes each for 4-6 hours at a time on end), and there were some common and reasonable concerns I’d like to document here.

1. We need some form of club officer training for distant clubs.  I believe we could set a policy limiting it to clubs 50 miles or more from any district-sponsored training (so the majority of clubs would continue to attend the existing face-to-face training).  The distance training could either be an interactive videoconference with existing district training (as D21 has been piloting for three years), or it could be WHQ-produced computer-based training.  For the latter, it would need to be participatory, asking questions of understanding along the way (but not a “test”), so someone doesn’t just hit “play”, go do their laundry, and come back an hour later, all “trained”.  Also, I think it would be reasonable to require that all seven officers be trained if the club chooses this option.
2. We need much more transparency and openness.  The board needs to announce what is on their agenda (“we’re looking at a possible dues increase”), we need to know promptly when decisions are made, we need to know the details about the decision, and we need to know why the decision was made.  The dues increase is exhibit A here, and while there’s been a sort-of acknowledgment that it should have been announced much earlier, I haven’t seen an actual apology from the powers-that-be.  Learning how to accept blame and acknowledging a mistake is a very important leadership lesson.
3. There’s no huge concern about the dues increase itself, just in how and when it was communicated, and the lack of clear reason for it.  A few districts in particularly hard-hit areas are going to be most troubled by it.
4. Providing materials on-line, and quickly.  People were excited to hear that the contest materials were soon to be available on-line, but they wanted more, if not everything (it’s trivial to produce a PDF version and post it on the web site, as is already done for visually-impaired members).  The planned online availability of contest materials was given very short notice (like the dues), and this has led to unnecessary expense, since many clubs and districts had already ordered them on paper.  (I recommended asking WHQ for a refund on recent contest kit orders.)
5. We need to become truly global with local contract printing of materials for members who don’t want to or cannot download and print their own (with faster delivery at lower cost), and setting dues in local currencies with local banks collecting them (our members and clubs and districts should not have to shoulder the currency exchange risk).  This would also enable us to easily subsidize clubs in developing countries, like Papua New Guinea or Rwanda, as an investment in the future (like Youth Communications).
6. Many were interested in reduced dues for students, the unemployed, and perhaps senior citizens, like many other organizations do.
7. An alternative academic calendar option is needed for college clubs, with different deadlines for electing club officers and making dues payments (perhaps paying for a full year at a time).
8. There was a lot of concern about member retention, especially with the dues increase.  My best recommendation to address that is to ensure clubs have strong mentoring programs — someone taking a personal interest, asking the member “What’s your next speech topic?”, “Can I hear you practice it?”, “When are you giving it?”, is the best way to keep members coming back.
9. The rebranding is generally pretty exciting, though there’s concern that, for the ordinary potential guest who is looking to improve their communications skills, the new Toastmasters tagline (“Where leaders are made”) will not immediately tell them we have the solution.
10. Many people asked how I could get the most International Officer Candidate Survey (IOCS) votes, but not be nominated.  I have long believed we need to reassess how the ILC works (before I was even a 2VP candidate), with a few options coming to mind.  One is to provide a detailed scoring system (like our speech contests) so the ILC members can objectively consider the candidates.  Another is to abolish the ILC, and either let everyone run (we really need to use preferential voting to avoid the revotes when no one gets a majority at the August business meeting, just like speech contest scoring), or take the top three from the IOCS (others can run from the floor), essentially turning the IOCS into a primary election (probably need to add the Lieutenant Governors to the IOCS voters).  Another indication of the need to reform the ILC is that there were originally two candidates for Region V International Director, both well-qualified, yet the ILC nominated just one of them.  When is one candidate ever better than two?  We need to devolve the nomination of director candidates to Regional Leadership Committees (RLCs), where they’ll be much more familiar with the candidates.
11. WHQ could facilitate candidate interviews at the August convention by making sure there’s some sort of appropriate place to hold them, and perhaps even provide a centralized appointment system.
12. We need to strengthen the district nominating committees with appropriate training.  All too often, the Division Governor and Lt. Gov’r of Marketing races are uncontested.  The nominating committees need to understand that seeking out good candidates is part of their mission, not just screening people who have already stepped forward.  Stronger district leadership will produce better districts that can more effectively help their clubs and members.

Aside from the above, I have to wonder what the other 12 districts were busy doing.  I know at least a couple said they were too busy attending educational sessions at the convention to meet with me.  I wish they understood that one of the key reasons their trip was paid for was so that they could assess the candidates and make an informed vote.

The daily Toastmasters calendars I handed out (with the big red bow on the cover) were very popular.  I had printed 300 of them, primarily for the trios, but towards the end, on Friday, we started giving them away to people who asked.  Perhaps the TI store will produce something similar in the near future.

There’s a lot of ideas above, some easy, some complicated, but I think they all are important concerns that need to be addressed in the near future by the board of directors with world headquarters.